2024 Belgian Grand Prix: Preview

KICK Sauber F1 Team wraps up the first part of the season at the Belgian Grand Prix, held at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit. This is a place steeped in the history of Formula One, with corner names – Eau Rouge, Raidillon, Blanchimont, Pouhon – that alone can evoke epic pages of our sport’s history.

Here, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu will aim to deliver, alongside the team, a good weekend to head with momentum into the summer break.

Team Quotes

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Team Representative: “We head to Belgium for the second and final leg of this back-to-back before the summer break, after over four intense and challenging months that saw us racing in the Middle East, Asia, North America and Europe. As the first half of the 2024 season wraps up, it is time to look back at how things have gone for our team: there is no denying we are not where we expected to be at the beginning of our campaign, with no points to our name, but as a team, both trackside and back home in Hinwil, we are working hard to improve, race after race. The weekend in Budapest has been quite a difficult one for us in the end, as we had the confirmation that we need to make a further step forward both in terms of race pace and consistency across different tyre compounds to fight for the points. Still, the new parts we brought showed to be working as expected, giving us the direction to take – both for this weekend and for the second half of the season.”

Valtteri Bottas (Car 77): “Spa is such an iconic circuit, and I have always enjoyed racing here in the past: it’s one of those places that test the cars and the drivers and there are many corners that are just so exciting – Pouhon being one of them. It seemed like yesterday that we were kicking off our campaign in Bahrain, and here we are just about to wrap up the first half of the season. Without doubt, we wanted more from these first thirteen races, but we are doing everything in our power to turn the tide. Our performance in Budapest last weekend was overall better than in the last couple of events, even though the race was eventually disappointing, proving that the upgrades helped us, and should do so here as well – this is the direction we must be working in. The improvements are incremental, but every little helps: we need to keep pushing all together to make another step forward, both this weekend in Belgium and for the remainder of the season.”

Zhou Guanyu (Car 24): “We get to Belgium this weekend for the last stint of this back-to-back, before Formula One heads into the summer break. It’s been a tough first half of the season for our team, where we surely had set higher expectation – still, we are not giving up and we won’t do so until the end of the season. The new package we tried on Valtteri’s car in Budapest showed a positive step, although there is still work to do to maximise its output. This is something we can achieve all together, as a team, like we have always done. We must keep focused, working on improving our performance for this weekend and for the second part of the season, aiming to close the gap to our direct competitors and get back in the mix for points.”